by Jack Womack
"It's concerning me."
"I gather he's miseried at present?"
"Dangerously so."
"He is your husband, so I did as I could," she said. "Mayhap he's most dangerous to himself at present. But if he seeks other targets, ready yourself to jump."
"His medication ineffected," I said. "Otherwise-"
"He's uncontrollable in any circumstance," she said. "It's as he was trained, so why surprise inheres, I couldn't say. It was recommended that he be termed for his actions there, you know."
"By whom?"
"Leverett. You didn't know?" I shook my head. "The need to conspire overwhelms even the need to conspire against. It's plaintruth."
"He says you're mindlost and you say he lies," I said.
"And who truths?" she asked; shrugged. "Both or neither, depending on what's initially believed. If something's not seen that doesn't mean it's not there. You know your eyes. Should you believe me any more than I believe you?"
The longer we talked the more we seemed to doubt each other; I drew away, thinking of what she'd said, listening to jingling bells. I circled round in my chair to consider their source. Centered on a side table within the AC's currents was a fetal art sculpture; I recognized the style as Tanya's. The skeleton held no pronounced deformities; it dangled from a weightbent black metal rod rooted in stone. Miniature bells hung from toes and fingertips, musicking the air. The slender bones were aqua, matching the walls; it uncer tained whether the room was toned to fit the art, or if the art was dyed to suit the room.
"When did you discover them?" I asked. "It's a surreptitious field."
"Their work fascinates. It's so uncooptable by men."
"It's Tanya's work?" Judy nodded. "We met briefly at a showing, predeparture. Barely a word had chance to pass-"
"I've supplied her with studio space in Riverdale this year," she said. "You should meet her, and talk, if Leverett's scheduling allows you a spare minute."
"I'd like that," I said.
"He'll have you on twenty-four-hour call once he's rolling. I'll give you her number. Contact her. Slip my name, she'll host you well."
"Gracias," I said; quieted for a moment, wondering if I should leave. "You've known me thirty years, Judy. I'm so untrustworthy now?"
"No," she said. "Anger displaces in bad situations. He has me raging, Iz, and some spills over. Forgive, por fav. Time tells truth."
"I've something else to tell," I said. "Before coming here I stopped at the clinic and received additional test results-"
"What's discovered?"
"I'm pregnant."
For a moment or two I feared the news left her reactionless, and regretted bringing it up; then her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth as if to speak. "You're not," she finally said. "Wasn't he clipped?"
"I'm told it happens," I said. "We loved before leaving, and it took."
"I'm muted. You're assured you're babied with his?"
"Who else's?"
"Your husband reported you were raped," she said. "Inferred that if you denied, it was because you'd blanked it. I doubted, Iz, but-"
"John's errored," I said. "That's what so unleashed him. Misunderstanding, nothing more, but I couldn't convince otherwise in time. I thought I had, since-"
"The beast didn't assault you?"
"He touched me, and suffered for it," I said. "But it's undesired, being around him. The baby's John's, none other save mine."
"Then you'll abort?" My moment to silence came, and I did. "You don't mean you'll carry it?"
"They'll track its growth," I said. "It's miracled that I conceived, Judy. Miracled that John could plant. As circumstanced, I might birth proper-"
"None do, nowadays," she said. "And his as well. Iz, reconsider. You've so hardened your life, don't worsen it now."
"I'll chance it," I said. "My decision's made. It's our saving grace, mayhap. Nothing else will hold us as one."
"That's what's wanted?"
I nodded. She came around her desk and hugged me, warming my body with her feel. We held each other, secure against all others. She stroked my back as she had years before, on nights when we sheltered offstreet, secluded from horror; I'd allow her to comfort and pleasure, and she promised to look after me always, however many years we had left. "I'll certify your care, Iz," she said. "I can't certify John's."
"Do what's possibled," I said. "If he stables he'll see he can bring life so well as death-"
"If he wants to see," she said as we sat on her deskedge. I stared at her earrings' holoed inserts; two small corporate spheres smirked back at me. "You've much to discuss with Tanya, then, if otherwise evented."
Before I could consider what she'd said a buzzing startled me; Judy touched her intercom. "Identify," she said.
"Delivery, Madam," a man's voice answered.
"Delivery's unexpected. Identify further."
"Martin," he said. "Presently stationed in general HQ Security. Assigned to Miss O'Malley prior to regooding, Madam."
"Of course," Judy said. "Recalled. Prepare to enter." Reaching back, stretching her arm across her desktop, she flipped several switches. "Iz, close in. Your feet."
"Excuse?" I said, drawing up my legs. As I did the floor yawned around the desk; transparent baffles lifted, surrounding us. As they rose they curved inward, closing round until they met at the top, sealing us up as if we were within an oversized bell jar.
"My suggestion," she said, pressing another button. "Your desk is supplied, too. Enter, Martin."
No more than half the guards were ever recognizable to me by sight. His single-breasted suit was in standard, unbesmirched, corporate blue. He'd knotted his necktie in an impeccable four-in-hand. The man stared at us with doll's eyes, glassy and wobbling. "What's delivered?" Judy asked.
"Goodbyes," he said. As he began racing across the room toward us, before he slid his weapon from beneath his jacket, Judy engaged another switch and the back of the sofa facing her desk returned fire. His Krylar underlay held as he flew floorways, skidding back. When he rerose, his intention cleared; aiming his weapon at Judy's window he let fly, breaking the glass. Leaping up, he threw himself through, hanging on the edge of the air as they do in cartoons; then gravity intruded and he plummeted, wordlessly traveling one hundred and six floors. The wind rushing in blew printout off her desk; a pigeon fluttered in between the shards and landed on the roof of the dome above our heads. Alarms rang buildingwide, and cover-smoke poured down from the roofs vents.
"They'll regood when I will, Iz," Judy said, starting to cry until I thought she neared breakdown. "It's too much."
I sat alone with E in his room when I returned, late that afternoon. "That guy's really your boss?" he asked me; I sat far enough away to be unreachable, his condition notwithstanding, mindful of the monitors forever reading whatever actioned within.
"For now he's overseeing me," I said. "I work elsewhere, regularly."
"He acts like a boss. Old know-it-all." E studied the drainage tube as it emerged from beneath his hand's gauze. "He ever talk straight about anything?"
"I'm told he does."
"Don't believe everything you're told," he said. "That's what my mamma always said to me. Don't know what you Dero get told."
"You truthfully think that's what we are?" I asked. He shook his head; his eyes were unreadable, shadowed by the bandages. The lower half of his face was visible now, as it hadn't been that morning; I saw no sign of scars, and his skin was so clear that his complexion no longer suggested that he lived solely on paste.
"I guess not. You all aren't like me, that's for sure."
"Leaving off Dero, then, did you read much science fiction?"
"Some," he said. "Stuff about space ships, Mars. Travelin' through time to hunt dinosaurs. Long as people got killed and went flyin' off somewhere I liked it. I had a idea for a story once but I never wrote it down."
"That's good-"
"This space commander and his girl scientist land on Mars. It's in the f
uture," he began. I closed my eyes, wishing my headache might overcome me, so that I wouldn't have to listen. "He goes outside to explore, she sees this of Martian comin' up behind him. Big of sucker, got long arms and all green, scaly, goofy-lookin'. She puts her head through the porthole and shouts and warn him. He runs off but she gets her head stuck like in a fence and then the Martian sees her and-"
"The spaceship's portholes are open?"
"After they land."
"There's no atmosphere on Mars," I said. "No Martians, either."
"You know?" he asked. "Y' been there?"
"What do you think of where you are?" I asked, keen to distract him from recounting the rest of his tale. "What does it resemble? Anything you've seen or read of before?"
"Kinda," he said. "You gonna tell me you took me into the future?"
"Not your future," I said. "Time travel's impossible."
"Nothin's impossible-"
"But you are in our future."
"What're you talkin' about?" he asked, laughing. It disturbed me to see that in reconstructing his lips, the surgeons had so adapted his embouchure as to allow him to form without seeming effort the perfect Elvisian sneer; the expression reappeared too often to be deliberate, and I wondered in what other ways his body had been recut to suit.
"You've read stories about parallel worlds?" He nodded. "Where you lived exists parallel to our world, and resembles ours as it was almost a century ago. Do you believe me?"
"Hell, no-"
"The concept's understandable, though."
"This world's like mine but it's in the future, and it's not my world, right?" I nodded. "So this's what the future'll be like in my world?"
"Probably not," I said. "Your past doesn't exactly correspond to ours. The worlds are similar, but separate."
"Why're they similar if they're not the same, then?" I shook my head. "How'd you all come over and how'd we go back?"
"We have a method of transferral," I said; I still had it. The compact was returned to me along with all materials in my purse recovered from the crash.
"This is the only parallel world?" he asked.
"One's not enough?"
"Damn," he said. "This's worse'n science fiction-"
"Because it's real," I said. "Hard to explain, harder to understand."
"You're crazier than he is, Isabel," E said, frowning. "If you all are Dero, course, then you'd tell me all kinda stories."
"We're not Dero, Elvis-"
"Maybe not that you'll own up to," he said. "I'm not gonna listen to it."
"It's essentialled that you do-"
"Damn you, I don't haveta do nothin'," he said; had he not been so harnessed by wires and tubes I might have taken his anger more seriously. From my bag I retrieved a disk I'd obtained from research that afternoon, one heard timeover during our training.
"Here's something for you to hear," I said, slipping the disk into my player and switching it on.
"I'm not fallin' for it," he said. "You're just like the rest. Lyin' to me through your teeth ever' chance you-"
He ceased his rant when he heard his voice blaring around him, permeating the room.
Approaching him, I lifted the disk's container and held it before his eyes, allowing him to see himself as, mayhap, he would one day be. The sleevephoto was of this world's Elvis, jumpsuited and forty, many kilos heavier and closing in on his life's end. E's lips curled away from his teeth as he listened, forming neither sneer nor smile; expressing emotions more along the line of anguish, or fear. "As he is, so you'll be," I said.
"No," he said. "Turn it off. Go away-"
"This is your counterpart's voice as it was," I said, incom- prehending my position, trapped in one room with the Once and Future Kings simultaneously. "As you'll sound soon."
"I don't look like that-"
"You will."
He tried pulling his arms loose of their bonds, to stop his ears against the song. "Leave me alone-" I took his wrists in my hands to keep him down; he struggled, but was too weak to break my grip. "Please turn it off. Turn-"
"You believe me now?" I asked as he tired and ceased his fight; perspiration dewed his upper lip, soaking into his face's gauze. "He was here. You're there. Two and the same. Two worlds. Two of you."
"Where am I?" he pleaded, beginning to cry. "I wanta go home-"
"This is home now," I said. "Answer. You believe me?"
"Yeah," he said; he cried. "Please don't-"
"You'll listen to what I tell you now?" I asked. "Will you?"
"Don't hurt me. I didn't mean t'hurt her," he unexpectedly said, inarticulating through his sobs. "She wouldn't stop fussin' at me."
"Killing never essentials," I said. "Hurting people never essentials."
"Don't hurt me, Isabel. Please don't hurt me-"
"I won't," I said, switching off my player; taking his damp hand in mine, I held it, standing at his bedside interrogating myself while he cried himself dry. I knew I had to break him, but didn't know why; did making him suffer content me? Had I taken vengeance or pleasure in my act? I'd rarely looked for answers, fearful of what I'd find; one question led to others until, at end, nada certained. Had John's mindset affected mine more than we could admit, or was it as Judy believed, that my stone was harder than his all along?
E settled at last; what I could see of his face appeared as a boy's, which he was, after all. "My sooties're cold, Isabel," he said. "Cover 'em up for me."
"Your what?" I examined his blanketed form, unsure of what might be exposed; saw his stubby toes protruding from the edge of his sheet. "Sooties?" I asked; he affirmed. I tightened his bedding around his toes, thinking I'd prefer to tag them. Aware of too many untoward emotions coming to me, I filed them all away.
"Thank you, Isabel," he said. "You'll come see me tomorrow?"
"Yes," I said, replaying the word sooties in my aching head. "Tomorrow. Sleep now."
As I was driven home that evening I studied the filed material Leverett had given me-translating its obfuscatories as I read-regarding the other world's recent history as found in, or inferred from, the history text we'd brought back. In that world's 1939, as we knew predeparture, the immediate future grimmed: the Depression was unending, Churchill and Roosevelt were dead, and Stalin-during the first bor- derbreak Alekhine kidnapped and returned with him to our world-was absent, leaving naught to roadblock Hitler.
World War Two came there, as here; Germany invaded the whole of Europe, Japan swept through Asia. Trotsky returned to Russia from Mexico in Stalin's absence, taking power, reorganizing his Red Army and converting factories to war production. A separate peace, agreed to by King Edward and drawn up by Prime Minister Butler, was rigged between Great Britain and Germany; that done, Hitler readied his soldiers to invade Russia. A week before their assault was to begin, Trotsky ordered his own attack. For two years the forces stalemated along the Eastern Front.
In America, President Willkie, foreseeing unavoidable involvement, reinstituted the draft following his inauguration in 1941; declared war on Japan and Germany after the at tack on Pearl Harbor, later that year. Matters progressed, for a time, in like pattern to what had happened here. Then Willkie coronaried on D-Day, as Allied forces were landing at Marseilles; Hitler was assassinated by his officers the next month. A cease-fire was called by Trotsky, new President McNary and Chancellor Speer. The war continued in the Pacific; Germany agreed to a conditional surrender and withdrawal to its original borders. In August 1945, fourteen atomic bombs were dropped in one week on Japan by America, destroying Tokyo, Kyoto, and other cities; the war ended.
Our experts inferred, from what I'd told them concerning E's statements regarding Germans, and from the McCarthyish manner in which communism was spoken of within the text, that a relationship between Germany and America developed as both readied themselves for possible attack by Russia, some day in the future.
But what of my people, over there?
The book's later chapters, which I'd not read, told h
ow A. Philip Randolph, the union leader, called for a general strike of all black workers in early 1942, threatening a halt in wartime production unless the American apartheid system was dismantled. They struck, at least in the north, but not for long. After the riots were calmed an emergency measure was enacted, interning as potential traitors all black Americans for the duration of the war. The text never overted what underwayed, but stated that the measure was still in effect; our experts suspected that after the war German specialists were consulted regarding the treatment of difficult populations; there, as here, they were likely experienced in such matters.
I cried as my car pulled up before our building, and tried to imagine a world without me.
John was asleep when I found him; since his release he'd spent much time in slumber. His copy of Knifelife, its black cover bleached by battery-acid spillage, lay open before him; I read the passage, related in Jake's words.
When one kills another, two die. Never forget this. Even when no blood is shed some inevitably spills. The drops collect around you over years; each action deepens the pool. Once the bottom is lost, the surface is unreachable. Accept your drowning time.
"John," I said, tapping his shoulder. Not for the first time an ever-present possibility intruded itself into my mind, that in my absence he'd finally lost himself in his pool. "Love-?" Subconsciously, he seized my wrist; readied to snap it. "No!" My shout awakened him; he blinked once or twice, staring at me as if needing to remember who I was before he released. It surprised me that his fingernails were so darkened; my housekeeping wasn't so bad that he'd dirty himself, sleeping. "Forgive, Iz, forgive-"
"Forgotten," I said, massaging my wrist, looking at the purple welt rising from my deadwhite. "Bed yourself, John, you'll stiffen."
"I have," he said, smiling, lifting himself from his seat. "Love me, Iz. Please."
When he enfolded me within his arms I initially thought of fending him off; shortly decided I didn't want to, and returned his kiss. Babysitting E would allow me too little time with my husband, and my condition would soon prevent such play; I wanted to enjoy what moments together remained to us. Holding one another, we went into our room. He didn't hurt me; as we loved I stayed inbodied, consciousing myself full as I once always did when we loved, as if premonitioned that the next morning's events would forever steal one of us from the other, and wishing to pleasure so much the last time as we had the first. Afterward we were so commingled as to be immediately uncertain whose limb belonged to whom.